TASTE: the sound among all sounds

TASTE is the map of your pool: every sound placed by how it sounds, with an amber glow for how much the model guesses you’d like it. Each pick draws as an arrow, and every glow moves with it.

TASTE only shows; nothing here changes the model. What it has learned in detail (the weights, which way liking rises, how its guesses have scored) is one level up, in LEARNING.

1. Make a few picks in EVOLVE. The glows light once the model first fits: at the sixth pick, or right after the warm start.
2. Go to TASTE: its stop above PERFORM’s, ⌥↑ from PERFORM, or ⌥4 (the levels).
3. Point at a sound to see its card, and click it to open it.

On the way, the face of the sound you’re playing flies to its mark on the map. A sound that isn’t on the map as it is (one you have edited since you opened it) has no mark to fly to, and its face fades as you go.

The line under the title says what the map is drawn from: From 18 picks., or before the first fit, how far away it is (3 more picks and it fits your taste.).

Reading the map

The legend at the top right says which you are looking at: it likes more beside two glows, or still a guess beside a dashed ring.

SOUND and TASTE

The switch at the map’s top left chooses how the sounds are shown. No sound is drawn under it, or under the track along the map’s foot, so every sound can be pointed at, clicked or touched.

• SOUND, the default, shows the sounds as they are. Once the model has fitted, their glows show too; before that, there are none.
• TASTE colors the map by what the model thinks you’d like: every sound is dimmed by how little it is liked, so the ones it guesses you’d reach for stand out. Before the first fit it shows every glow as a dashed ring, a guess.

Holding ⌥ for the model view switches the map to its TASTE side while you hold it (or while MODEL is tapped on), and back to where you left the switch when it goes. While the view is up the switch rests, dimmed, and its tooltip says why. On a touch screen, a long press on the map shows the model view while your finger stays down; a long press on a dot does not open its sound, as a tap does.

Size is the one people miss, and it’s the useful one. A big, dim face is a sound the model has no guess about. A small, bright one is a sound it’s sure you’d reach for. The sizes are spread over this map’s own range of doubt, and before the first fit every face is the same middling size.

The footer says how much a flat picture can hold:

A flat view of 40 sounds: close dots usually sound alike (it shows 31% of how they differ).

That is often a third or less, so read a distance as a hint, not a measurement.

A sound’s card

Point at a sound and its card opens beside it: the sound’s name, how much the model guesses you’d like it (would like: 59% · leaning), ▶ PLAY, which plays its phrase (if it has to be rendered first, a dotted amber ring says it’s on its way), and OPEN, which opens it as the sound you’re playing.

Clicking a sound opens it too. It plays at once, and the green ring moves to it with the click. A sound the app can’t play yet, as it starts, wears a dotted ring until it’s yours.

The card’s percentage is the model’s rating after your last pick. The bank’s rows, under the model view, show the rating from the last refit, so between refits the two can differ.

From the keyboard: Tab to the map, then the arrow keys move to the nearest sound in that direction, Enter opens it, and Esc closes its card. Space plays the sound you’re playing, as it does at every level.

Taste over time

Once there are two moments to move between, a track runs along the map’s foot. Its room is kept from the start, so no sound moves when it appears. Each tick is one moment: amber for a pick (thin and dim before the first fit), a short silk tick below the line for a star or a cut, a faint line where the map was redrawn, a green diamond for a generation, with how many sounds joined (+3), and a bright full-height line where you opened a taste file. The label says which moment the map shows: now · after 26 picks at the right-hand end, counting your picks as the title does; an earlier moment counts the picks the model had taken then.

1. Drag along the track, or click it, to look back. The line under the title reads Looking back., and the map shows the glows and places as the model had them then. Stepping one moment at a time draws that moment’s pick as its arrow (reversed when you step back past it); a jump draws none.
2. With the track focused, ← and → step one moment, and Home and End go to the first and to now.
3. ▶ at the track’s left replays every moment in turn, from the first.

The track shows exactly what the model posted at each moment, because the page keeps each reply as it arrives: the model itself keeps no history of its ratings. The track begins when this session began keeping it, so a session from before this version starts its track at its first load since. It holds the last 200 moments and is saved with your session; a reset clears it.

A pick, drawn as what it teaches

When you pick between two sounds, TASTE draws an arrow from the sound you passed to the sound you picked, and every glow on the map moves at once.

Every glow moves because a pick is not only about the two sounds you heard. The model learns which way your taste leans, along the difference between the two, so its rating of every sound moves with it: the ones that differ the same way rise, and the ones that differ the other way fall.

• When. The arrow appears when the pick reaches the model, as its seven-second undo window closes. Picks you made while TASTE wasn’t showing are drawn in turn when you open it, up to the last six.
• Stars and cuts move the glows without an arrow: they rate one sound, not a direction between two.
• A PERFORM offer you took or passed moves the glows too, but draws no arrow: an offer never joins the pool, so it has no place on the map.

The arrow stays a moment and goes. With reduced motion set on your system it appears whole, stays as long, and goes, and the glows step to their new brightness rather than easing there.

A refit settles everything

Every sixth pick the model fits your taste again from everything it has learned. Then the map is drawn again, and every glow and every place settles to the new one together. The map turns rather than flips: a place you recognize stays near where you left it. Nothing moves under your hand: if your pointer is on the map when the refit lands, the refit waits until you move off it, or rest a second. A generation's new map, or a taste file's, that lands under your pointer, or a refit that lands while a sound's card is up, settles the glows at once, and the places wait the same way; a generation's new sounds appear on the map when the places settle.

In ⌘K

At TASTE, ⌘K’s list starts with THIS LEVEL: Color by taste (it says on while the map is colored by taste) and Replay how your taste moved, the track’s ▶.

What to try next

• Open a big, bright dot: a sound the model guesses you’d like but isn’t sure of.
• Make a pick in EVOLVE, then open TASTE, and watch which way the glows move.
• LEARNING shows what it weighs to make those guesses, and Reading what it learned has the habits that keep you from over-reading it.